<Elan> Duhn Duhn DUUUUUUNH! </Elan>
I spot 16 baby vampires in the last panel. Did I miss any?
I only count 13, including the partial one that you can’t see the head of, to the left. However, they just passed about a dozen of them that are not in that panel. So they’re in the middle of a couple dozen, roughly.
I wonder what spell level that Insta-Vamp spell is. It would have to be a very low level spell for Durkula to cast it that many times. Or perhaps he was able to teach it to the other vampires. If I were DM, it would not be a low level spell, so I’m guessing the latter.
That was my thought. Dunno about teaching it to the others but that’s a lot of castings of “Hasten Vampirism” or whatever. And, yeah, I don’t see it being a 1st or 2nd level spell
Maybe Durkula was scribing scrolls or creating a magic item to do it?
The three guys in the foreground are not OOTS members. Also, check Mr. Scruffy’s look.
So…if you were on an airship and about to go on a dungeon crawl involving vampires, what would you bring along? (Aside from a cleric with high ranks in Turn Undead?) Do they have lots and lots of holy water? Or is the OOTS about to get level drained into extinction?
It sounds like Roy didn’t plan on there being more than four vampires, and he’s the leader. It would thus depend on others having enough of that stuff, I’d think.
Both Haley and Belkar have stakes, Elan has garlic breath, Vaarsuvius has an anti-vampire spell set prepared, Roy has a fancy sword that’s especially effective against undead, and all of them have a copious supply of holy ale (what, you didn’t think Thor would bless water, did you?).
Quick note–if I’m reading correctly, a vampire killed by blood drain rises as a full vampire, not as a spawn, making them significantly deadlier. At 2 negative levels/hit, the PCs really really don’t want to get hit here.
That said, the vamps are in excellent area-effect formation. A sunburst or a prismatic spray would ruin their evenings.
Those would part of the dozen or so they just passed. So my estimate of a couple dozen total is about right.
I wonder how many are part of the temple guards and how many are just ordinary citizens. The latter will be only first or second level, the guards may be somewhat higher. Likely all of them, except maybe Brother Sandstone are just Vampire Spawn.
This would be a good time for Elan to cast a Mass Cure Light Wounds. On the other hand, there’s a cleric among them (besides Brother Sandstone). She might cast a counterspell to the Light spell V cast. This is the first time that lighting a dungeon has been a point in this strip, so this may be an issue.
If the person had less than 5 HD, they rise as Spawn.
Roy does have an advantage in that if he uses the green energy of his sword, it’ll restore any negative levels. That happened in the fight with Durkula at the Godsmoot.
They also all have magic weapons for good old fashioned stabbing & slicing. When reduced to zero hit points, a vampire turns into mist and escapes to its coffin but none of these have coffins so they’ll presumably be effectively destroyed. Same as during the Godsmoot. Durkon is the only one where they’d really want to stake/paralyze him to retain his body. Kind of sucks for the dwarfs who can’t be Raised but so it goes.
Edit: On a side note, I would be greatly amused if Durkon somehow succumbed to sunlight since he didn’t actually research Protection from Sunlight. Although that would also destroy his body a la Malack.
True rez will bring you back from that, right? Although that raises [heh] the question: where’s the closest cleric that can cast that spell?
There may be nobody around, although if they return to the place from which they got the quest, the question may be moot.
I thought Burlew said before that True Resurrection doesn’t exist in Stickworld. But it exists enough that Haley alludes to it when trying to resurrect Roy and it came up that the only cleric even potentially able to cast it would be Redcloak.
Big question heh raised here:
Durkula rose in less than an hour-mere minutes in point of fact, IIRC. Is there some technicality I am missing?
Edit: Yeah, that was Malack’s staff it would appear…
Resurrection (not True Resurrection), the same thing they used on Roy and are planning on using on Durkon, only requires a small portion of the remains, and explicitly says that the pile of dust left behind by a Disintegrate spell is good enough. Presumably, the pile of ash from a sunburned vampire would also work… which is why it’s significant that Malack’s ashes were blown away and scattered.
Nitpick: you can only counterspell during the original casting. You can, however, cast a spell that counters the spell - a counter spell 
- afterwards. (Shame there’s no way to bold a space.)